Category Archives: Technology

Free Turn-by-Turn Navigation for Your iPhone

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Do you have an iPhone and want a free GPS navigation app? Here is it.

A couple of months ago I was researching iPhone navigation apps for the United Kingdom as I was going to be driving a rental car over there for a long weekend. Of course The first ones I found were the good old TomTom and such. However, I also discovered something called NavFree which was absolutely free to download. I thought this couldn’t be so I tried it out.

NavFree is really free. Map data are coming from the OpenStreetMap project. That’s why the developers don’t have to pay hefty license fees to TeleAtlas or other commercial vendors of map data. The quality of NavFree’s road data is really good and the software always guided me well to my destinations. You don’t need a live Internet connection as all the map data etc. are included in the actual app. The UK version is about 300 MB, the U.S. close to 2 GB. So you want an iPhone with plenty of memory.

As I said, apparently the OpenStreetMap project has come a really long way already. I was impressed with the level of detail. Recently I also used the U.S. version which worked fine too. It had the tiniest roads in the most remote villages. Points of interest such as museums and airports are included as well.

One essential accessory I recommend to buy is a holder that plugs into the car’s electric outlet and also provides an FM transmitter. That way you can receive the audio commands of the navigation system through your car radio. The iPhone speaker is not good enough on a noisy road, so this makes a huge difference. Also this lets you play your music and podcasts through the car’s audio system. You can find these on eBay for very little money.

Retiring from Twitter

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I’ve decided to give up on Twitter. I haven’t used it in months now and I don’t seem to miss it. I’ll keep my account but I won’t be using it much. I hate to say it, but Facebook rules the world now.

About three years ago Twitter was the greatest thing. It was one of the first products allowing to share short status messages with other people though a website, a desktop application, the mobile web, mobile applications and even SMS. The great idea behind Twitter was to build not just a website but a service which is accessible from many interfaces through an API.

But Facebook, back then just a website, transformed into a service too. These days Facebook has status updates, a location-based check-in feature, apps for various mobile operating systems and APIs. Most of my friends are on Facebook, hardly anyone uses Twitter. For me, Facebook wins over Twitter.

Twitter as a search engine provides limited value too. Over the years It has become a place for spammers and SEOs (which is pretty much the same thing). There are so many fake accounts even advertising networks for paid tweets. Whatever you search for, the results are full of junk.

Nowadays I mainly use Facebook updates to stay on top of my friends’ lives. The only extra value that Twitter provides at this stage is communication during events like conferences and trade shows. It’s a very powerful way to monitor what’s happening where. We will see when that functionality is being adopted by Facebook.

Porn Goes HTML5

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In my last post I argued that HTML5 will replace Adobe Flash as the main technique of delivering videos online. YouTube supports HTML5 already.

A current post at ConceivablyTech reports how the porn industry is moving the same way.

There is a lot of money being made in adult entertainment. It’s always worth keeping an eye on these companies because they make choices very carefully, simply because of the amount of revenues. If these guys give HTML5 a go, it must really mean something.

Who needs Flash anyways?

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You’ve probably heard about Apple’s Steve Jobs’ war against Adobe’s Flash. Jobs thinks or at least proclaims that Flash is an insecure and outdated technology and that it will not find its way on Apple’s mobile devices. Others say that the whole internet relies on Flash these days and that the web would be mostly without Flash.

Well, it’s not! After having surfed the internet with my iPad for several weeks I can honestly say: I don’t need Flash anymore, and soon no-one will need Flash anymore. Most websites that I personally use don’t make use of Flash at all. Google, Facebook and even YouTube, they all work without Flash. The only Flash elements I noticed not working where banner ads. I can live without them.

Facebook has created a slick web interface using JavaScript. And YouTube uses HTML5 to display videos on modern browsers without Flash. I can watch YouTube videos on my Apple devices without any problems.

I’ve played around with HTML5 a little bit lately. It makes a lot of things a lot simpler, including the integration of audio and video content. Finally there is also an “audio” and a “video” tag. No need to implement 10 lines of code to display a video using Flash anymore. HTML5 can store data locally and even run offline.

If you are a Flash developer, let me tell you: It’s time to learn something new unless you want to be a dinosaur in a couple of years. In five years Flash will have become mostly irrelevant as most services will have switched to HTML5.

iPhone Apps on the iPad

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In general it’s a nice idea to be able to use the mobile applications we have purchased for our iPhones and iPods on our iPads too. However, the user experience is pretty bad because iPhone apps are designed for a 480×320 screen.

The bottom line is: You are better off using a website instead of an iPhone app. Unless you are using a made-for-iPad app you should use your browser instead of these applications. Running regular iPhone apps on an iPhone is pretty lame.

Here is what you get when you display this on the 1024×768 iPad:

And here is what the corresponding website looks like on the iPad:

Which version would YOU prefer?

Apple iPad Delivery Problems

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Yesterday was delivery day for my pre-ordered iPad. I haven’t had time to play around with it much so I’m going to write a review in a couple of days. But I can definitely say that Apple are having serious delivery problems with the iPad in Europe.

I was supposed to meet a friend after work and had some time to kill. So I went to one of the major electronics stores in central Berlin to check out what was going there in terms of iPad hype. I was ready to take photos of happy Apple disciples holding up their new toys like relics. But as David Bowie said, this is not America.

First of all, I saw absolutely no advertising for the iPad inside the store. This made me wonder whether they were even selling it. So I went upstairs to the Apple corner where I was welcomed by the following sign

Dear customers, for iPads please refer to our customer service representatives. Maximum items per customer: 1 while stock lasts. Reorders are possible of course. Delivery date unknown. Your MediaMarkt team.

So we are taken back to the age of food stamps here.

Anyhow, I talked to some of the sales people there. The first guy said that all of them had been sold in the morning already. He wasn’t allowed to tell me how many they had on stock. So I asked him if it was more than a hundred because I didn’t see any advertising for it. He raised his eyebrows and replied “I don’t think we’re going to be selling any more of them in the next weeks.”

If you ask me, I don’t think they had more than 50 in one of the most central electronics stores in a European capital. All this means that Apple are pretty much out of stock because they got overwhelmed by their own success in the U.S.. This is also why they postponed the release date for Europe.

The bottom line is that the iPad is not going to be such a major game changer in Europe in the next weeks. They ruined their premiere and if competitors like neofonie with their WeTab or Dell with their Streak hurry up they can grab a big piece of the tablet market here.

TeamViewer Remote Control

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Have you ever wanted to control a remote computer? Then you have probably messed with VNC-based programs in the past. But the problem is that VNC is usually tied to a very specific port. And if you are behind a router or firewall you need to configure that device to allow you access to the computer. All really complicated, especially if you’ve never heard of HTTP ports and such.

TeamViewer solves all of these problems. It’s remote desktop software available for Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhone. All you need to do is start the software and enter the TeamViewer ID of the remote machine and a pre-defined password. TeamViewer does the rest. No more worries about port configurations and possible video drivers interfering. For non-commercial use it’s absolutely free and a must for every geek.

Download: http://www.teamviewer.com (no affiliate link)

It’s the Software, Stupid

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My allusion to Bill Clinton’s famous phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” refers to the ongoing discussion about the price and value of hardware vs. software in consumer electronics.

Today Apple released their iPad, a new tablet computer that looks and works pretty much like a blown-up version of an iPod Touch. Many people seem to bash the iPad because its hardware is nothing special, also because it doesn’t even have a USB port. Why do I think it’s still a great piece of technology at a reasonable price?

It’s the software, primarily the operating system. Apple spend an awful lot of time on making things just work for the user. They invest a lot of research and development to make their products simple to use. No-one needs a manual for the iPod, iPhone or iPad. On the other side, there are even MP3 players that you can’t get working without consulting the manual.

Same thing with Mac vs. PC or iPhone vs. others. The hardware used is quite similar. The iMac isn’t using Motorola chips anymore but Intel. And the screen and the drives come from third parties too. The hardware is nothing special, designed in California but made in China. But it’s still superior because it just works. How many times have I had to help my dad figure something out on a Windows PC. I’ll just have to get him a Mac at some point.

Even if some devices give you much better hardware, their overall user experience still can’t compete. If your time is worth to you more than money, go for Apple. Yes, their products are not perfect and a bit more expensive. But with a one-time expense you can save yourself time everyday.

P.S. This post was written using the WordPress application on an iPhone. This is something I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that smoothly with any other mobile device that I know.

Tracking for iPhone Application Downloads

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Long time no post on the affiliate tracking front. I just want to share some exciting news with you.

As you know for a while I’ve been working for Sponsormob, the CPA Network for the Mobile Internet. We’ve released our download and conversion tracking for iPhone applicatiions. This means we can track installations of mobile apps on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.

Ads will be placed within other applications or on the (mobile) web. This is a 100% in-house solution and proprietary technoloy. While most of the online marketing world is still struggling with non-web transactions we went the extra mile and made it happen. We’re going to expand this to other mobile device platforms as well.

Thanks to Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit and James Coops of Mobyaffiliates for the buzz. You should check out their blogs as well:

No more Windows

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The last day of 2009 will also be the last day of me using Microsoft Windows. This is a quick farewell to an operating system I’ve been using for 19 years. Over time it became worse and worse. Today I would describe Windows as vulnerable, slow and over-engineered. And no, Windows 7 doesn’t do it for me either.

For about a year the only reason for me to use Windows is iTunes and iPod/iPhone. Most of my other tasks could get done easily by a Mac or a free Linux distribution. Tomorrow I’m going to bury Windows and use the free disk space for my existing Ubuntu installation. For development and office work I’m switching over to Ubuntu, multimedia and iPhone stuff will be done on a Mac.